Francesca Gabbiani at Lora Reynolds at the Armory
Photo: Anna Krachey

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Armory

There was a high level of quality in everything at the Armory show, even in the ugly stuff. The whole place was so packed with art that it took me awhile to figure out how to look at it. But it turns out it works like a Tumblr page: keep scrolling until you notice something good. I marveled at the way the fair was a great equalizer of fairgoers. Whether a collector, gallerist, or art student, everyone stood in long lines for $9 sandwiches, sat on occasional stools or on the floor, and grabbed the ubiquitous 20X200 totes.

Philip-Lorca DiCorcia
David Zwirner, New York

The large photographs were on display, but I was attracted to the booth lined with Polaroid test shots. Most of the test shots were familiar from other exhibitions I’ve seen, but the images’ size evoked that intimate buzz that comes with finding a stack of yellowed photographs in an old house.

Francesca Gabbiani
Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin

Gabbiani’s work was some of the very best I saw in New York because it has a level of craftsmanship, beauty, and whimsy that I didn’t see very often. The papercut undersea collages attracted a lot of attention from fairgoers. While obviously intricate and detailed, close inspection revealed signs of human excess lost among the fish strewn reefs.

Vidya Gastaldon
art:concept, Paris

Gastaldon’s Blake-like colors and compositions had an updated psychodelic feel. In a better kind of myth-making, these, like the Dawolu Jabari Anderson comic paintings I saw later at Volta, made me want to know the whole story.

Anthony James
Nicholas Robinson Gallery, New York

James’ “Wall Mounted Birch Box” encapsulates the feeling of being at the Armory show. The rows of slightly crooked sticks mirrored into infinity felt like getting lost. Sort of like a sculpture of the perfect vision of the Internet.

Volta 

My impression of Volta was that few of the galleries brought artists who took very much risk. Rather, throughout the fair, artists had put visible effort into making quotidian objects out of fine materials. I also noticed that most of the German galleries were showing downright terrible art. I wanted more knockouts from the fair as a whole, but everything seemed pretty quiet and unassuming. But here are the standouts.

Dawolu Jabari Anderson
Finesliver, San Antonio

I really like Anderson’s black cultural references mashed into superhero comic book covers. In a lot of ways the technique is easy. But placing Michael Jackson in a ring of zombie cops from the 60’s conjures an instant empathy with the pop superstar. In that moment, all I want is that he defeat his circling foes. A problem arises when I try to figure out the back-story, though. Where is Jackson’s Bat Cave, and who sleeps over at night?

Jennie Ottinger
Johanssen Projects, San Francisco

Ottinger paints monumentally simple scenes on small canvases. The stripped-down quality of featureless figures placed in familiar but uncommon settings (a jury taking an oath, at a banquet) connects to viewers in an iconic way. The scenes are recognizable, but have a ghostly feel like documents of a bygone family history.

Todd Pavlisko
Samson Projects, Boston

Pavlisko’s work gliztes pop culture, but in a sad way. I didn’t see the video of him nail his foot to the floor that put off some fairgoers, but the painting of Steven Hawking suspended in the fuselage of an anti-gravity aircraft reveals something about the power of individual imagination to transcend individual limitations.

Rafaël Rozendaal
Extra Joker/One Star Press, Paris

This was my favorite stop at Volta. Probably because I spent so much time chatting with the gallerist, Christoph Boutin and Anna, the attendant. I asked about all the URLs pinned to the wall, and Anna pulled over a laptop to show me www.newrafael.com. The Parisians were pleased when I told them I was familiar with Rozendaal’s work, and had spent some time clicking around his site, playing what I thought at the time were simple games. With his hybrid of webart, Rozendaal creates a gymnastic space that combines “public” Internet space and collecting (collectors may purchase the domain names of Rozendaal’s sites from the artist). Though I had never considered URLs as canvases before, I now see a simple connection. A URL sale is not unlike the auction of Sex.com. 

Carrie Schneider
Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago

In Schneider’s video “Slow Dance,” a bartender watches as two dancing figures double. First the man is augmented by another man who slips into the first man’s sweater, embracing both the dancers. Then the woman is doubled. Maybe I am just drawn to sad things now that I am full-on thirties, but in “Slow Dance” the past stacks and multiplies with the sexual energy of the present darkening its door. I mean, regardless of what is happening in our relationships, we are always going to be thinking about something else.

Alexander Tinei
VOGUES Gallery, Frankfurt and Ana Cristea Gallery, New York

Tinei paints with a hipster/self-referential style that fails other artists because they are really interested in style and fashion. Tinie’s concern is painting, so his canvases make these vamps come alive by accenting the figure, not the style, in startling and beautiful ways.

Whitney Biennial

I expected more. The exhibition was reminiscent of my art fair experience. The mostly “blah” work was punctuated by a few moments of genuine surprise. I don’t think unyielding surprise is too much to ask from a survey of contemporary art, yet there were just not enough highlights for me to feel satisfied with the exhibition. Most of all, the biennial reminded that actions are exciting and ideas boring.

Kate Gilmore
“Standing Here” creates a gripping tension as the artist escapes a drywall rectangle by kicking footholds into its sides. I get the sense of that Hollywood tension created by the sound of the rising orchestra.

Roland Flexner
Mounted in small frames, Flexner’s drawings, which he makes using a modified Suminagashi paper dying technique, look like a series of landscapes. Up close, the landscape deteriorates into blobby abstraction.

Loraine O’Grady
“The First and Last of the Modernists” encapsulates culture with four simple pictures of Baudelaire juxtaposed with Michael Jackson. The work makes a sweeping assumption about wealth, fame, and artistic ambition. I really like this kind of ballsy sweep, which according to the label copy, took sorting through thousands of Jackson images to match the scarce Baudelaire images O’Grady had on hand.

Aki Sasamoto
I am not sure what to say about the “Strange Attractions” installation other than it felt like a crazy Crate and Barrel store in which I was watching myself interact with suspended housewares from the store security booth.

Robert Williams
Williams’ watercolors update single panel cartoons to create politically poignant monsters. In “Greenkatchina” a cactus shaped familiar poses as guardian of the desert. Greenkatchina implies an environmental message, but unlike Smokey the bear, Williams’ familiars threaten and attract like spaghetti western gunslingers.

Dan Boehl is a workshop fellow in the Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program. His chapbook Les MISERES ET LES MAL-HEURS DE LA GUERRE is now available from Greying Ghost.